


Care and Feeding

by Not_You



Series: one only understands the things that one tames [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Comfort Food, Couch Cuddles, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Food Issues, M/M, Past Abuse, Reading Aloud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 09:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Early on in their acquaintance, Clint begins to get an inkling of what Phil is all about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Care and Feeding

Phil sighs. It’s whiny and pathetic to think _I thought he liked me_ as well as inaccurate. Clint does like him. He knows it. He also knows some of what Clint has been through, and he knows he’ll have to be patient. It still hurts, though.

“What now, boss?” Clint snarls. He’s vibrating with tension, standing there over his smashed plate like a threatened wildcat over a new kill.

“Well, now you’re going to clean it up. There are some rubber gloves under the sink.”

“…That’s my punishment?” He gives Phil a look of utter contempt.

“It’s not your punishment. You’re just going to clean up the mess you made because you’re an adult.”

For all his bluster, Clint isn’t really a bad sub. He’s moving to the sink to get the supplies even as he says, “This is fucking stupid.”

Phil just shrugs. “I’m sorry you think so, Clint,” he says, going and getting a fresh plate and putting new portions of chicken, cornbread, and green beans on it. Clint picks up the broken one and cleans the tile floor and throws away the spilled food. He sits by the trashcan for a moment, looking mournful. It breaks Phil’s heart. “Come on,” he says, a full plate in each hand. “We don’t want it to get cold.” Clint stares at him in blank incomprehension, and the pieces of Phil’s poor heart break again. Food restriction as a disciplinary measure has always struck him as despicable. 

Even when Phil was in high school and Roberta, his first sub ever, had acted out because a girl she was jealous of would be at a party Phil was invited to, he had brought back some of everything from his wealthy host’s buffet and fed it to her by hand while she cried and apologized and swore that she trusted him and didn’t know why she had been so unreasonable. The idea that Clint thinks he doesn’t get anything for breaking one plate and wasting a single portion, when Phil knows for a fact that he hasn’t had anything since a meal-replacement bar twelve hours ago, makes him want to go back in time and kill everyone who has had a part in fucking up his poor brave boy. Hell, that’s why Phil has actually bothered to cook, wanting to have a hot and homemade meal for his sub after a long debriefing.

“Uh, boss?” Clint follows him out to the dining room table, sounding more timid than Phil has ever heard him.

“Yes?”

“…What am I supposed to do?” He flushes as he says it, as if his need to know that is shameful.

“Sit in your chair,” Phil says. He loves having a happy sub sit at his feet to be fed, but Clint seems to be used to being forbidden the furniture as a punishment, instead of being placed on the floor where he doesn’t have to worry about anything as a reward. Phil sets Clint’s plate down in front of him, and settles into his own chair. Clint warily does the same, eyes on Phil. “Go on,” Phil says, unfolding his napkin onto his lap and picking up his knife and fork.

Clint touches his utensils like he has never seen anything like them before, and stares at his plate for a long time before starting to eat. He keeps his eyes rolled up to watch Phil like a stray cat too hungry to carry a handout away and too nervous to enjoy it.

“Sweetheart, I told you in the beginning that I don’t punish. I don’t like it at the best of times, and certainly not with you.”

“Question,” Clint says, voice trying for flippant and landing on brittle, “are you out of your mind?”

“No, just unconventional. Besides, you’re tired and hungry. No one is at their best, then.”

“…Oh.” Clint looks down at his plate, still confused, but calmer now.

Phil smiles sadly. “Is the chicken all right? I’m afraid it’s a little too done.”

Clint swallows hard, and cuts himself another small mouthful. He seems to have a hard time swallowing, and his voice is husky when he says, “It’s good, boss.”

Phil can feel his smile widening. “I’m glad.”

They don’t talk for a long time after that. Clint is far too hungry to maintain any kind of conversation, and Phil wants to savor his own good cooking. He has always loved feeding his subs, and is delighted to see Clint get up and serve himself seconds and then thirds. After he finishes his last plate, he clears the table and washes the dishes, putting everything away exactly where it goes. When Phil tells him he’s a good boy, his ears turn bright pink and he stares hard into the dishwater. “You are so full of shit.”

“No, I just know a good boy when I see one.”

“Good boys throw plates now?”

“Sometimes, when they’re upset. But it doesn’t make me angry, only a little sad about the wasted food and the broken plate. I like that set.”

“…Sorry,” Clint mutters, and then jumps as Phil starts scraping the leftovers into plastic containers. Phil passes him the pans to wash, and Clint scrubs them and sets them on the drainboard, still tense as he washes his hands.

“It’s all right, honey. I forgive you,” Phil says, and Clint snorts derisively even as his shoulders relax. “I’m going to stay up and read for a while, but you go to bed if you’re tired.”

“What if I go to your bed?”

“Then I’ll be glad to sleep with you, in the most literal sense.”

“What, are you too damn old to get it up?”

“No, but I’m too old to stand and listen to someone insult me for no reason. I’ll be in the living room.”

“So ignoring me is my punishment?”

“No, but I do want to finish my book. You’re welcome to join me as long as you’re quiet.” Phil is really hoping that someday Clint’s face won’t take on that flummoxed expression at not being punished. He’s expecting Clint to head upstairs on his own, but he follows Phil into the living room instead. Phil picks up his copy of Lady Oracle and curls up at one end of the loveseat. Clint takes the other, and just sits there for a long moment, dead silent. Phil can’t hear him breathing, and he doesn’t shift at all. “Comfortable?” Clint doesn’t say anything, so Phil looks up, one finger marking his place. Clint is looking at him with that mixture of defiance, shame, and longing that Phil sees all too often. “Want to be closer?”

“Yeah,” Clint croaks, and slowly moves to lean on Phil, resting his head on Phil’s shoulder. He swallows hard, and then speaks in a broken whisper, sounding even more vulnerable than he had in the dining room. “Read to me?”

“I’m nearly at the end, so it won’t make any sense to you.” He can feel Clint tense a little, and he wraps his arm around him. “That’s why I’m going back to the beginning. And no, I don’t mind.” He kisses the top of Clint’s head, and begins to read. “ _I planned my death carefully; unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it. My life had a tendency to spread, to get flabby, to scroll and festoon like the frame of a baroque mirror, which came from following the line of least resistance._.”

Clint just snuggles up and listens silently to Joan Foster’s neurosis and grief in her Italian hideaway. He doesn’t make a sound, and as Phil gets to the end of Part One, he realizes that Clint is asleep. He’ll have to wake him to get him upstairs, but for now Phil just holds him, happy to have Clint so warm and trusting in his arms.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Care and Feeding](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4597758) by [OnlyAugustine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnlyAugustine/pseuds/OnlyAugustine)




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